


Waiting in the Wings

by Kaiosea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Universe, Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort a little, M/M, Pre-Slash, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4192515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiosea/pseuds/Kaiosea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Suga had wings, it was kind of weird playing volleyball with him on the court, though not difficult for Kageyama to accept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting in the Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ideallyqualia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideallyqualia/gifts).



> it’s a treat! (I hope it is.) I was thinking about wingfic, and wrote this with your letter in mind :)

“Kageyama, off. Suga, you’re up,” Coach said. 

Kageyama swiped a hand through his bangs and prepared to leave the court, breathing hard. They were in the middle of a practice match, and the week before, they’d heard in advance that Suga would sub in for Kageyama half-way between sets. 

Though it hadn’t been long since he joined the team, it had stopped feeling jarring to be ordered away. His body used to seize up whenever he had to go, but lately, it didn’t feel like anything at all to leave, which probably had something to do with the person he usually relinquished the court to. 

Suga wasn’t moving, though. He was putting his hands together and wringing them, and hunching his shoulders over. “I’m sorry. I can’t play today.” 

Surprised, Ukai said, “Are you injured? Not feeling well?”

Suga pressed his lips together, forehead crinkling. “No. I’m fine.”

“Which is it?”

“I just can’t.”

Kageyama never heard Suga refuse anyone before, but there he was, mumbling an apology from his chair at the sidelines. 

“I can play for the rest of the game,” Kageyama interrupted, since Ukai looked like he was getting frustrated. 

He heard Tsukishima say something snide and clenched his teeth, but it was worth it when Suga shot him a grateful smile, saying, “I’m sorry. I should be able to play soon.” 

“When?” Ukai asked. 

“Tomorrow,” said Suga. “Tomorrow for sure.” He pressed his knees up to his chest on the chair and worried his lip. 

 

 

But Suga was wrong about tomorrow, because the next day, he found himself having to offer the same flimsy excuses for his inability to play. 

Understandably, Ukai did not believe him. 

“I just can’t,” Suga reiterated. “I don’t know what else to say, but it’s really not possible.” 

With unfortunate timing, something under the back of Suga’s jacket moved. Suga knew it didn’t look natural, and he couldn’t hide it by pretending like he was stretching or shrugging, like he had the day before. He bit back the urge to swear. 

Ukai leaned forward, face tensing. “Is everything alright?” 

As if taunting him, the back of his jacket stirred again, completely out of Suga’s control. 

“Do you have an animal under your clothes?”

“N-no…”

Great, and now the team had started to notice. 

“Are you keeping a bird?”

“Is it a magic trick?”

Tanaka and Noya flooded Suga with questions. Daichi raised his eyebrows. 

Reluctantly, Suga thought about it a little more. He wouldn’t be able to hide much longer, and he wanted to show them on his own terms. “If it’s you guys, I guess I don’t mind.” 

He took off his two jackets, standing up in just his T-shirt and shorts. He turned around so they could see his back. 

Fitting through two self-cut holes in the back of his T-shirt, there was a pair of wings. 

They were grey like Suga’s hair and eyebrows, and crumpled up into his back, though once Suga removed his jacket they’d begun to unfurl. A stray feather floated to the ground, and it was caught black in the light. 

For a second no one talked, and then everyone spoke at once. 

Hinata hit Kageyama on the back, shouting something about birds, and Kageyama nudged him. Suga heard a lot of voices mixing together, and Daichi kind of shrugged at him, nodding like suddenly everything made sense. 

“So, I have these things growing in my back,” said Suga, trying to raise his voice. “I didn’t want to play until I was ready to show them.” 

“Right,” said Daichi. “Those are wings.” 

Suga knew he meant it as a question. “I don’t know. A few days ago I went to sleep, and my back hurt, and when I woke up these things were on me.” Suga wiggled his shoulder-blades back. 

With an alien thrill--he still couldn’t believe the appendages were attached to his own body--he saw his wings do a flutter. 

“Oh!” said Noya. “Cool.”

“Very questionable, overall,” said Kinoshita. 

“Wait, what’s the question?” Ennoshita asked him in a hushed voice. 

“Oh, I-- I-- don’t know. It’s just an expression, that I use…” Kinoshita’s voice faded into the background. 

Ennoshita patted him on the back. “Don’t mind.” 

“I questioned it too,” said Suga. “I didn’t get an answer.” 

Now was probably a good time to ask for help with his other problem: how to hide the wings from his classmates and schoolteachers. 

Tanaka appointed himself the hero. “Guys, I have a cape. You can use it, but just know… it's for vampires. You’re not a vampire, are you?” 

“Won’t I still be noticeable with a cape…” Suga was not just going to respond to the vampire thing. 

“I think a cape is reasonable. Would you rather be stared at for dressing like you go into a coffin every night or like you’re supposed to be flying around with a halo?” Daichi said, scratching his head like he couldn’t believe he had just posed that question. 

“Halo!” Noya yelled, and Hinata echoed him, pumping a fist in the air. 

“Cape, definitely the cape,” said Suga. 

“Can you play volleyball?” asked Kageyama. He yelped when Hinata stepped on his foot.

“Not everything is about volleyball,” Suga reminded him, and Kageyama’s ears reddened. “But I’m actually not sure.” 

He said it casually, but Suga had actually been worrying enough to develop a day-old headache over whether or not his place on the team would be affected. 

“So back to the subject of the cape--” said Tanaka, very serious. 

“Did we ever leave that subject?” Noya said. 

“--it’s free if you want it. It’s black.” 

“I had assumed,” Suga said. 

Under his breath, Ukai said, “I guess they don’t call us crows for nothing.”

 

 

Suga was self-conscious as he walked into school, cape drawn around his shoulders. 

“Where did you even find this?” Suga had asked Tanaka that morning, when he dropped it off. 

Tanaka had just smiled in a way that Suga could tell he thought was mysterious and raised his eyebrows. The overall effect had been somewhere between a piranha and an bluejay, neither of which were mysterious at all. 

The class representative pretended to faint in front of Suga when he walked into homeroom. 

“Very funny, Michiko.”

Straightening back up, Michiko pushed up her glasses and flicked her long hair out of her face. “What’s with the cape?” 

“I’m in hibernation for the winter.” Suga blinked widely. 

“I didn’t think capes were that warm. And, it’s summer.” Michiko was truly the master of the deadpan expression. 

“The nights can be chilly.” 

Michiko nodded wisely and stroked her chin like a beard. “That’s true.” 

They chatted for a few minutes before Michiko devoutly went to her seat before the bell rang and waited for the teacher to call roll, all without saying another word about Suga’s strange clothing choices. 

The rest of the class looked up to Michiko, and since she was cool with the cape, they were cool with it too. So there weren’t any questions directed at Suga outright, but he did notice the occasional person staring at him. 

He curled his arms around his head and tried to sleep on his desk, but it only made his wings puff up in the cape more. 

 

 

Takeda had an important announcement at the next practice. “I read through the entire rulebook twice. It doesn’t say anything about wings.” 

“You really needed to read it to know that?” Ukai asked. 

“Rules are rules.” 

Ukai grunted. 

“What I’m saying is as far as I know, Suga can play.” 

“I can?” Suga’s voice was tepid. 

“Yes. And if it’s necessary, I will fight for you,” said Takeda, merely trembling. “I can do it. I have all the arguments ready, and lots of direct quotations.” 

Suga didn’t doubt that, and he gave Takeda his sincerest thanks. 

“There’s only one possible complication,” Takeda added. 

“What is it now?” Ukai said. 

“Naturally, any referee will not permit Suga to use his wings at all.” 

Suga gulped. 

Before he got dressed that morning, he had tried to practice, pretending to set an imaginary ball in his bedroom. He’d ended up floating all the way up to the ceiling, jamming his fists into the plaster. 

“Suga,” his mom called. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said. From the ceiling, a piece of dust fell in his eye, and he wiped it out.

 

It was Suga’s first practice with the team in a week, and his confidence in himself was severely shaken.

He filled his lungs with air and exhaled. All he had to do was receive and set; the same things he’d done for over two years now. 

Daichi sent the ball over to him with a solid receive, and Suga mentally prepared himself to jump. 

The ball was spinning towards him. Suga felt his weight shifting through his bent knees, down to his heels, until it transferred to the tops of his feet. 

He left the ground for a weightless millisecond, swung at the ball and missed disgracefully, ascending more quickly than anticipated, before a hard weight pulled down at his back and he fell flat on his face. 

“Ow. Ow, _ow_.”

Noya and Daichi were first to his side, checking him over anxiously. 

Not wanting them to worry, Suga forced himself to stop grimacing. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded sharper than he’d wanted, and Daichi only looked more concerned. But they backed away like he’d wanted. 

“You okay to keep going?” Ukai unfolded his arms, looking similarly concerned. 

He was okay, but--he could tell he’d only embarrass himself further if he stayed on the court. “I think it might be better if I sit out and watch. I’ll stay after and practice on my own.” 

Ukai nodded. “Kageyama!”

Across the court, Suga saw that Kageyama was zoned out and staring at the ceiling, but he snapped to attention at Ukai’s call. “Yes!”

“Can you stay after and work with Suga on learning how to set with wings?” 

“But I don’t have wings.” 

Ukai knit his eyebrows together and opened his mouth. 

Kageyama said hurriedly, “I mean, yes, yes I will stay.” He nodded excessively. 

_I don’t need help_ , Suga wanted to say. Instead he smiled at Kageyama; it wasn’t his fault that he’d been assigned an impossible task. 

 

Kageyama had hidden the glowy feeling he got when he heard that Suga could still play volleyball. It was hard to suppress his cheeks from blushing, but he did his best. Then, he’d majorly panicked when Suga joined practice again and immediately fallen. Kageyama had averted his eyes right away, guessing that Suga wouldn’t want to be stared at. 

He had no problem with remaining after practice, which he usually did anyways. And particularly if it involved helping out Suga, though he wasn’t exactly sure what services he’d be able to provide. 

“Maybe a back-and-forth? Just to start,” Suga suggested. 

Kageyama nodded, but he was confused by the waver in Suga’s voice. 

It was kind of weird, playing volleyball with a sort-of potential angel. Suga’s wings tipped up with interest before every receive, and they twitched when the ball hit his forearms. Kageyama didn’t find it difficult to accept; it added a surprising dimension to the volleyball they played, but apart from that, Suga was still the usual Suga. 

They moved to simple drills, the focus on simple tosses that didn’t require Suga to jump. 

“Hinata, left,” called Kageyama, throwing the ball in to Suga. 

Suga tossed, and though he didn’t leave the ground his wings flapped excitedly, and before that ball had met the ground Kageyama threw him another, saying “Asahi, back,” and Suga tossed again, and they kept repeating the pattern until the floor was so littered with balls that they had to clean them up before they could restart. 

Kageyama thought he had determined something helpful, and he said the sentence in his head three times, building the confidence to tell Suga, before squaring his shoulders and speaking. 

“Your wings are signaling who you toss to.” 

Suga rubbed his cheek. “And I’m not even flying? That’s no good.” 

Kageyama’s ears pricked. “We can--but we can work on it.” Feeling like a Daichi imposter, he stuttered through the encouragement. 

But an hour later, they had made no noticeable progress, and Suga was blatantly yawning. He apologized to Kageyama and thanked him. 

“But let’s do this tomorrow, right?” Suga smiled. 

Kageyama stared, not thinking about smiling back until Suga had left the room. 

Since he hadn’t worked himself to exhaustion yet, Kageyama decided to practice with the water bottles again. It took him several minutes to neatly put them into place. 

He’d barely tossed ten times when he heard a noise like a crash coming from the locker room. He jumped back and froze, fear shooting down his spine. 

He had to check it out, didn’t he? What if Suga was in trouble?

Darting his eyes from side to side, he snuck on his tiptoes over to the locker room and nervously peeked around the corner. 

It was Suga. The contents of his bag lay on the floor. Suga was bending over to pick everything up, and his shirt was only halfway on. 

Kageyama stared for a second too long, taking in the sight of Suga’s wet hair slicking around his ears, and the water droplet slipping down his cheek. 

Suga straightened and blinked. “Kageyama?”

Kageyama went back into hiding around the corner, knowing he’d been seen, not knowing what to do about it. 

“I know you’re there.” 

Kageyama ran out from behind the corner and bent over forwards in an exaggerated bow. “I’m sorry. I looked at you.” 

“Oh,” said Suga. “I’m not in the habit of being looked at.” 

“But I didn’t see your--your--” Kageyama stuttered over which words to use, a foreign sensation on his tongue. 

“My wings.” 

“I wouldn’t,” said Kageyama. “Look. I wouldn’t look.” 

Suga mumbled something to himself again, picking up his water bottle from the ground. 

“I’ll go,” said Kageyama, his face and chest heating fiercely. 

“If it’s you, maybe it’s okay,” said Suga, less mumbly this time. “Actually, can you give me a hand? I was having trouble with my shirt, then I started dropping things.” The side of his mouth twisted. 

Kageyama saw the problem immediately, when Suga turned to show him his back. The wings were stuck inside the shirt, wriggling impatiently. They hadn’t come out through the two slits Suga had cut for them. 

Kageyama looked at the wings a little bit, but not more than he had to, not wanting to be impolite... 

It wasn’t difficult, when there were other things to observe. The grey of Sugawara’s hair was even more interesting, up this close. The wispiness of his hair, but also: the curves of his neck, the muscles of his back beneath the shirt, and the way Suga breathed a little shallow when Kageyama’s fingers brushed clumsy over his bare tricep. He couldn’t believe that Suga trusted him enough to ask him for this, didn’t know how he’d earned his way into his confidence. Was the secret to trust, trusting everyone like this, or knowing who to bring into the fold? 

In the end, he had to widen the shirt-holes a little. He ripped the fabric with his fingers, using his teeth to neatly snip the loose ends of the thread. Suga’s breath hitched, and the wings came out of his shirt without issue, performing a happy flap. 

“Thanks,” said Suga. 

Suga was too close to him. Kageyama knew, rationally, that he was taller of the two of them, but up this close it seemed the reverse. Suga loomed tall in his vision, and Kageyama stifled his heaving breath. 

Looking more intently, Suga’s bottom lip was fuller than his top lip, and he had wings, and he had let Kageyama touch his neck. He smelled hot and soapy from the shower. 

Kageyama bowed his head and ran away, out of the locker room all the way home. 

 

They practiced again, several times a week, but they didn’t talk about the locker room. Kageyama guessed that Suga was pre-widening the holes of his shirt, since there were no more late-night crashes to be heard. 

They didn’t talk about it, and Kageyama didn’t think about it either, how he had left so abruptly after touching Suga’s wings and back, how he hadn’t washed his hands that evening or bathed before bed to maintain the feeling, or how he could still remember the few unclipped stray hairs that lingered at the nape of Suga’s neck, plainly visible when wet. 

 

“That’s the third wing--wing movement, number nine. Disqualified.”

 

For small mercies, at least Suga didn’t have to wear the cape to school anymore. (“Keep it,” said Tanaka, wiggling his eyebrows. “There’s more where that came from.”) After the volleyball match, the one where he’d begged Ukai for a chance to be put in and been disqualified after five points, it was true that his name had circulated through the school like wildfire. But only a week later, the gossip turned to something different, mainly because Suga gave only one-word answers to anyone who tried to question him about his wings. 

Though he still couldn’t maintain control over his wings well enough to join group practices or participate in matches without humiliating himself, he was coming to enjoy his duo practices with Kageyama. 

Most of the time. 

“Fmmmm--Darn.” When Suga jumped, his wings were still opening, despite a month’s hard work. 

“I don’t care if you swear,” said Kageyama, bending his knees to return. 

“I care.” Suga let the ball bounce back on his side. It was out-of-bounds. 

“Good call.” 

Suga nodded, looking at Kageyama with friendly eyes. He’d been surprised by how patient Kageyama could be, never having seen this side of him in group practice, but the younger boy had a spectacular eye for analyzing movement. 

Still, it was becoming apparent that no amount of gracious encouragement could make Suga’s repeated failures any easier for him to swallow, day after day. Twenty failed jumps-without-flying later, Suga sat on the ground and put his head in his hands. 

“I can’t fly. I can’t not fly.” 

Kageyama was silent for a long time. Suga didn’t know why he took so long to speak, when his observations were usually spot-on. “Suga-san. Do you think those are related?”

Suga lifted his head. “What do you think?”

He was silent even longer this time, and his fingers twitched at his side. “I think that… maybe you need to learn to fly, before you can stop flying.”

Before Suga could think about it long enough to respond, Kageyama backtracked. “That doesn’t make sense. Forget I said it, I don’t know--”

“It makes sense!” Suga almost yelled. “Well, it makes the most sense out of anything I’ve tried.” 

“It does?”

“I can't stop flying, until I know the way to fly in the first place."

Confused by hearing his own words repeated to him, Kageyama shrugged. "If you say so."

They practiced flying for an hour--or rather, Suga practiced, and Kageyama observed. It was exhausting, his back ached like never before, but Suga felt triumphant for the first time in weeks, like he had achieved one fleeting moment of triumph amidst a trial of despair.

Panting, Suga managed to float, not crash, into the ground for the first time. "Let's call it a day."

Kageyama applauded him formally and brought him a water bottle. “How do they feel, your--your--”

“My wings. Why do you avoid saying that?” 

“I thought you didn’t like being reminded of them.” 

Why was there a lump in his chest? Suga forced it back down. “I started calling them wings because it doesn’t matter, I know I’m not an angel.” 

“Neither am I.” 

Suga laughed. Continuing earnestly, Kageyama said, “Maybe you’re more like a bird.” 

“ _You’re_ more like a bird.” Suga thought of Kageyama’s implacable poise in mid-air. 

“Okay.” 

“Birds could also be angels,” Suga pointed out. “We just don’t know.” 

Kageyama laughed really hard at that, for some reason Suga didn’t understand. 

Then his chuckles cut off abruptly, and the next thing he said was the most surprising of all. 

“But Suga-san, it seems like it’s been hard for you.” 

 

 

Kageyama waited for Suga to answer. It seemed like Suga was struggling with something, because his mouth opened a few times, but each time he closed it without saying anything. 

“It has been, but--” Suga cut himself off. 

“You can do it,” said Kageyama, feeling out of line and too bold. His intuition was telling him to say it anyways. “Complain.” 

He felt like running away to bench himself on the sidelines, for a precious moment like he’d overstepped boundaries he hadn’t known existed before. It was true that he trusted Suga, but he could only hope that Suga would trust him back, even a little. 

Suga’s lips were knit tightly together. Kageyama looked at the tense lines of his shoulders, then cut his eyes away, not wanting to seem like a creepy staring person. 

“...Okay.” Suga blew a long breath out through his mouth. “If you insist on hearing it,” he said, drawing it out like he was afraid to speak the words. “They hurt,” he said. “They’re heavy.”

Kageyama let the silence stretch out until Suga stopped biting his lip. “I want to hear more.” 

Almost blurting, Suga said, “I had to teach myself how to walk again. I can’t use a backpack anymore.” 

Kageyama’s chest hurt, but he couldn’t even imagine how it was for Suga. “That’s hard.” 

“It is.”

“Keep going.” Kageyama dared to breathe again, heart racing with his own stray boldness. 

“I have to be everyone’s something--” Suga stopped himself again, biting his lip until it turned white. 

“Suga,” said Kageyama. “You can say more. If-if that’s what you want.” 

Maybe it was him that was inadequate for the task of being Suga’s listener, but if there was one thing he’d learned from Suga, it was that merit existed in the trying. 

After waiting so long that Kageyama was afraid to swallow for fear of the noise breaking the mood, Suga began to talk--really talk. Like a miracle. 

Kageyama tried to concentrate really hard and not zone out. It wasn’t difficult--Suga’s stories and feelings easily slipped into his mind and took hold of his imagination, his senses, his feelings. 

He sat there listening until his neck had gone stiff. He tilted his head straight. 

“I’m sorry,” Kageyama said, when Suga ran out of things to say. He didn’t know if he’d done anything right. 

“But it's okay, right? I can fly,” said Suga, brushing over the apology, his eyes glassy. “Sort of, well, when you’re around. Not that I’ll ever do it in public.” 

“Flying isn’t everything,” said Kageyama, feeling debonair. 

“That’s true.” Suga brightened imperceptibly. “But neither is volleyball.” 

Kageyama still privately disagreed with that, but he didn’t think the statement was as viscerally wrong as he’d used to. 

He had to say another thing that was hard for him, had to say it now before he lost courage. 

“Thanks.”

“For what?” Suga asked, his mouth curling into an unfamiliar, uncertain shape. 

_For changing me_ , Kageyama didn’t say. “For telling me,” he said.

Kageyama looked up at the ceiling of the gym. It never seemed that far away when he was in the air, and he only caught himself tilting his neck back when he was on the ground. 

Suga hummed, inching his hand closer to Kageyama’s on the bench. His wings folded in and settled on his back, and Suga acknowledged their movements. 

“And besides,” Kageyama said, warm through his fingertips, right where they touched Suga’s palm. They’d only met a few months ago, and here they were today. “Suga, I always thought that you could fly.”


End file.
